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Posts Tagged ‘modern living’

Sit Back And Smell The Bounce

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

When I take my daily walks, two smells are more prevalent than any. Fresh cut grass, you guess? No. Roses? Fresh air?  No and no. The two things that permeate the atmosphere in San Mateo? Bounce and car exhaust. I much prefer the latter.

We live in a Bounce-scented world. My friends smell like Bounce, their houses smell like Bounce, their animals smell like Bounce and their children smell like Bounce. Bounce is now the ubiquitous odor of modern society. Everywhere I go, all I smell is Bounce.

Several years back, Frank banished Bounce from our house. Citing early smell aversion therapy—Frank worked in a candle factory in college—he cannot tolerate heavy manufactured scents. When we got together, I was pretty enamored of Bounce. The product was rather recent at the time—carbon dating puts that somewhere between the Paleolithic Age and the Bronze Age—and I thought it was a nifty idea. No more gummed up fabric softener reservoirs in the washing machine, simply throw a little snippet of fabric in the dryer and voila! Soft, unwrinkled, great-smelling clothes. Frank, however, hated the smell of Bounce and pointed out that when using an entire sheet of the product, it coated our towels with a chemical that repelled water. Which isn’t exactly helpful when trying to dry off after a shower. So he started using half-sheets of Bounce and all was well.

Then came the day Frank refused to throw that half-sheet in the dryer. He’d finally had it. He didn’t want to smell like Bounce, he didn’t want the house smelling like Bounce, nor his towel. So he stopped using the product. I didn’t notice at first. By the time I did, I no longer cared. My towels worked better and the laundry detergent took out the bad smells, so who needed the damn fabric softener, anyway?

However, as we began to notice, everyone else we knew continued to use the product. But at that point, we didn’t care. We lived in a forest with very few neighbors. Smoke from wood stoves was the smell scourge of that neighborhood.

Five years ago, we moved to San Mateo and were inundated by all new smells. Car exhaust, mowed lawns, diesel fumes from El Camino Real, along with the sweet smells of my backyard: roses, orange blossoms and the piney scent of our redwood tree. When the wind shifts, we are attacked by McDonald’s fryer. Mmmm, filet-o-fish sandwiches and fries. When the wind goes the other way, the pizza place and Chinese restaurant compete for our attention. Sometimes the corner doughnut shop smells like it’s in our living room. But mostly what we notice is the smell of Bounce. All our neighbors use it. All one hundred thousand of them.

I can’t help but mourn the loss of non-man-made scents. The prevalent odors in modern society today are manufactured. Retailers use specially designed scents to attract shoppers. Hotels scent their lobbies. Public restrooms are cherry-smelling nightmares. Turn on the tube and Glade wants you to plug some gizmo into your electrical outlet that lets off timed bursts of “fresh scents.” Gak. When I was a kid, “air fresheners” came in a can and were used exclusively in the bathroom. And I have to say, even as a kid, I preferred the smell of crap over artificial rosy-smelling crap. “Air fresheners” don’t freshen the air. They pollute it with manufactured nastiness.

I grew up in San Mateo, and thankfully, the air is less polluted than when I was a kid. I no longer smell the scent of fresh DDT in the air—which also used to be ubiquitous—nor is the car exhaust anywhere near as toxic nor prevalent. I am reminded of this every time a classic car drives by and leaves me in a cloud of unburned gasoline and oil. But there has been a huge uptick in Bounce and other artificial smells. And I hate them all.

My hatred of Bounce came to a head this week when I received two shipments of pre-owned pants I bought off of eBay. When I opened the first package, a nuclear-powered blast of Bounce annihilated me. The lady must have used a whole freakin’ roll in the dryer. Instead of buying pants, I ended up with two large pants-shaped Bounce air fresheners. I swear, if I put these two pairs of pants into a packed gymnasium of sweaty basketball players, no one would smell anything but Bounce.

My nostrils stinging, I immediately put the pants in the wash. When I withdrew them, there was almost no change in the smell. Since the pants are brightly colored, I can’t risk washing them too much or the design will fade. So I hung them up in my bathroom to dry. Now my entire house smells like Bounce. The smell pervades everything. It has wafted into the kitchen, the back bedroom and Frank’s office. When I walk in the door, a wall of Bounce hits me. Sitting here at my desk, all I can smell is Bounce.

Disgusted, I looked forward to my second package of pants because surely these would not smell as horrible as the first two pairs. Wrong. When I opened the package, yet another typhoon of Bounce-filled air stormed my nose. And stayed there. I think Bounce has sticky molecules that are designed to adhere to human nostril hair. Because no matter what I fix for dinner—fish, chicken in peanut sauce or grilled steak—all I can smell is Bounce. I’m thinking of having nose hair replacement therapy.

Last time I wrote about a product that annoyed me and used the actual name, the manufacturer sent a team of lawyers after me. If the Bounce people are as aggressive as the odor of their product, this time I’m expecting a team of contract killers. But I’ll be ready for them. Because their scent will surely hit me before their bullets do.

©2010, Janet Periat

My Fridge is in Violation of The Geneva Convention

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

I have decided that I hate modern living. Every action that involves technology results in mounds of paperwork, more complexity than a calculus problem and instruction booklets five inches thick written in incomprehensible pseudo-English. All of which results in the ownership of a much more inferior product than you previously owned. Basically, if you make the mistake of replacing and “upgrading” your technology, you will suffer the tortures of the damned. This week alone we made the stupid mistake of replacing our cell phones and our old refrigerator. I will never be the same.

We got a letter from Cingular stating that our old analog cell phones were being phased out and we needed to replace them before they stopped working. We decided we would change our plan as well since Frank and I rarely use our phones. We decided upon a “Go Phone”— a plan in which you buy minutes ahead of time but pay no monthly fee. We figured we’d go in, pick out the new phones, sign up for the new plan and leave. Seemed logical, didn’t it?

One early Friday afternoon, Frank and I went to the Cingular store and picked out our “Go Phones.” The salesman rang them up and then discovered that he could not change our phone plan (and keep our same phone numbers) from the store. After much discussion, his manager told us to go home, call their customer service center, change the plan and then come back to the store to pick up the phones. O-kay. So we dutifully headed home, called up and were informed that we needed to get the phones first, sign up for a two-year contract, and then call the service center back and switch to the prepaid plan. So later on that afternoon, Frank went back to the store. The salesman said the guy at the service center made a mistake. He explained that with a two-year plan the phone costs half of what it costs on the prepaid plan. But if that’s what the service center said to do, they’d be happy to sell us the two-year plan. So Frank picked up the phones and headed home.

The instruction booklet for our new phones (we both got the same model) was a half an inch thick. “Hey, can you figure out how to make a call on this thing?” I finally asked after reading for about twenty minutes. Frank replied, “Not yet.” By the way, Frank’s job is to write manuals for much more complex machines than phones—like for magnetic imaging devices—and he couldn’t decipher the manual. So we gave up and began a trial-and-error approach. Four hours later, Frank and I finally figured out how to use the phones and customize them for our usage. I was so frustrated by this time, I considered throwing the stupid phone away and getting a tin can and some string.

On the following Monday morning, Frank called the customer service center to change the plan. Here’s a big surprise: he was told that he could not do that. He would have to do that at the store. Now near meltdown, poor Frank went back to the store. At this point, the salespeople were stumped. The salesman called the service center, talked to a bunch of people, and his manager called, too. Finally, they all decided that the only procedure that would work was for Frank to return the phones we just got and exchange them for EXACTLY THE SAME KIND OF PHONES (???), and then sign up for the prepaid plan at the store. Which was what Frank tried to do in the first place on Friday and they wouldn’t let him. So a now incredibly furious Frank had to drive home, pick up the phones and bring them back to the store to get identical phones in a different kind of box. It was beyond us why they would want our used phones in exchange for brand-new phones because of some ludicrous accounting procedure. So while we got all new phones, we’d lost everything we downloaded onto the other phones and we had to start all over again, inputting everything—which took a whole bunch more time. I was more convinced than ever that the tin-can-and-string phone would work better and more efficiently.

Frank’s reason for going into the store in the first place was to avoid the hassle of trying to do the transaction on the phone or Internet. How come a giant conglomerate whose sole function is to provide telecom services can’t provide telecom services? What are they doing besides merging and giving bonuses to the top executives and changing their names every week? Apparently, the salesman in the store was frustrated too. He apologized on behalf of the entire conglomerate. Which was nice but I would have rather been given the address of the CEO so I could send him/her a Spank-O-Gram.

For some reason, the phone thing didn’t clue me into fact that I should stop trying to improve my life through technology. So I went and got a new refrigerator. Which was actually easy. Well, the purchase was easy. I have to commend Sears. You go in, talk to a human, pick out an appliance and the thing appears in your home, mere days later with very few hassles.

We get the fridge; the guys who delivered it were wonderful. It was installed, it worked, we were happy. Then I started loading the fridge. All of a sudden, the fridge started beeping loudly. Which alarmed me. I’d never heard a fridge beep before. As I continued loading it, the beeping continued. At this point, I became very concerned. Was the fridge about to explode? Frank looked in the manual and discovered that the beeping is a new “energy-efficiency” feature on the fridge. The alarm sounds after the fridge has been opened for one minute and sounds off every thirty seconds afterwards. Supposedly to prevent the fridge from being left open accidentally. Apparently, the brainiac engineers who thought of this handy device have never actually loaded groceries into a fridge. Or cleaned one out (which is recommended weekly). So now, while you’re performing a task you hate anyway, you get tortured by beeping. And there is no way to turn off the alarm. Made me want to pound engineer face.

I began to wonder if the beeping was also installed as a diet alarm. You’ve been grazing for too long! Punish the offender with the hideous beep! I wondered if you continued to ignore the beeping, if there was a secondary alarm. Like if a panel would open up in the fridge and zap me with a laser. While there was no mention of the laser in the manual, I was still wary.

As it turned out the beeping was the best part of the noises our new refrigerator made. The hideous beeping was Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony compared to what was to come.

An hour after the fridge was plugged in, we noticed this irritating high-pitched whine. The kind that makes your nose and ears bleed. Frank determined it was coming from the fridge’s compressor. We figured the compressor was probably just warming up and the noise wouldn’t continue. An hour later, we were still bleeding. We finally realized that the refrigerator was broken. At this point, Frank and I nearly had a breakdown. We hadn’t even recovered from the cell phone trauma yet and now we had to somehow return the fridge? You can’t just stick a fridge in your pocket and drive to the store. All I could think was that I shouldn’t have allowed the Sears guys to haul away our old fridge, which was crappy and barely functioned, but at least it didn’t make a whine that should only be reserved for the torture scenes on 24.

Before I called Sears to have them haul away the fridge, I decided to check the manual to see if the whine meant that the fridge was about to blow up and if we should evacuate the house. Under the Troubleshooting Guide was this passage: Understanding Sounds You May Hear: The high efficiency compressor may cause your new refrigerator to run longer than your old one, and you may hear a pulsating or high-pitched sound. Great. The ear-bleeding high-pitched whine was NORMAL and would go on nearly continuously. Perfect news. Our homey little kitchen was now a Jack Bauer Torture Chamber. Frank got online and found that ALL new refrigerators make this high-pitched whine. Apparently, for those with hearing aids, the noise causes instant insanity. We were doomed.

We know what is going to happen. In two years, Sears and all the other fridge manufacturers will be forced to dampen the whining noise because of the hoards of people with bleeding ears that will be suing their asses off. But of course, Frank and I will still have our ear-bleeding fridge because it cost us thirteen hundred bucks and we’re not replacing it until it dies. Which could be soon. I’m planning on gluing my cell phone to the fridge and shooting the both of them.

Frank and I are going to be heading to an antiques shop soon to pick up an icebox. And stopping by Safeway for some canned soup and a ball of string. We are convinced the Luddites are the smartest people on the planet.

© 2007 Janet Periat

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